Thirty innocents are murdered
At a Baghdad apartment.
Palestine keeps lobbing
Useless missiles into Israel,
Inviting air strikes
Leaving hundreds dead.
In central Africa
Christians and Muslims
Systematically slaughter
Each other.
Seventy folks were shot
In Chicago
Over the holiday weekend.
Everywhere, inspired zealots,
Responding to orders
From their one true god,
Kill the infidels.

Meanwhile
Regal oaks, stately elms,
Weeping willows
Overarch
Lotus, rose, yarrow, dahlia—
Incandescent, stunning—
Wordless poems.

Breaking news: car bomb
Kills 89 in Afghanistan.
Malaysian plane shot down
Over Ukraine for no discernible reason.
295 dead.
More wordless poems.
(7/15/14)

Those martyrs seeking orgasm
In Jannah they hardly can fathom,
Focus their wits,
Explode into bits—
Which part gets to feel the grand spasm?
(6/28/14)

A tyrant named Saddam Hussein,
Immoral and finally slain—
Was better by far
Than Iraq’s evil stars
And should have continued to reign.

Von Clausewitz made it quite plain—
War’s function must not be arcane.
Attacks fueled by vanity
Are simple insanity,
The horror of leaders’ lame brains.
(6/15/14)

Of global politics and one true god
Religion, of interminable gun
Massacres, the horror of Africa—
I proposed a business that might be fun.

“Let’s raise some capital, use connections
To create a new TV sensation
We’ll name it The Good News Channel, and shun
The daily horrors that afflict, that stun

Simple humanity.” Laughing a fit,
“Marv,” they said, “there ain’t no money in it!”
(6/5/14)

I used to go to meetings, speak and write,
Obsessed with sense, with rationality—
Convinced we had the tools to mend, despite
The obscene rants of nationality.

Alas, how wrong could one man be, not see
How hatred—preached in mosques, and synagogues,
In Hindu temples, church—shaped history?
How faith and greed and demagoguery

Combine to overwhelm philosophy—
That love of wisdom doomed to atrophy.
(5/8/14)

Find a woman,
Raise kids.
But work, always work,
Which steals your time,
Controls all thought.

Meanwhile
There’s war,
Always war,
Propelled by greed
Or ordered by
The one true god.

Then, way old,
Retired,
Beyond volunteering,
Unencumbered,
You have the space and time
To figure out what life is all about
Just before you,
Like every other living thing
On this pustular planet,
Doomed,
Die.
(2/27/14)

We know we need to eat and drink, survive
Our weather’s rigors, somehow reproduce.
We’ve learned (though not too well) to get along,
Form social orders, minimize abuse.

But what the devil spawned competition?
The oldest athletes raced, threw javelins,
Wrestled, shot arrows—sport reeked of mission—
Useful stuff—not ice dance, nothing feminine.

Ancient games? Strength, ability to kill.
Designed, no doubt, to hone sharp wartime skills.
(2/13/14)

But folks rebelled: “We want a king to rule!”
Old Sam tried his best—warned that evil kings
Would rape their daughters, draft their sons, and fuel
Their reign with nasty tax on everything.

They got their king—good looking, rich, and tall—
Along with endless stress—who really ruled?
Universal struggle, fierce, mindless brawls
Twixt clerics and their monarchs never cooled.

Solomon built his temple with corvée—
Monarchs pray, kneel to kiss the bishop’s ring—
Some foreign states collect tax, to this day,
To help those churches do their awful things.

Not hard, I guess, to understand that fling
We read about—that flash German bishop
Spent 40 million bucks to tune his digs up.
Clergy rules! The proof: our Bishop of Bling.
(10/30/13)

The stuff we yearn
To hear and taste.

But then
The daily news intrudes.

Over a hundred killed
Stampeding to a Hindu shrine.
A schoolboy shoots a teacher
And himself.
Scores of innocents killed
By careless drone strikes.
Egyptian Islamists
Raid a wedding party
At a Coptic church.
Six bombed to death
On a Russian bus.
Seven bombed to death
On a Pakistani train.
Our largest bank
Offers thirteen billion
To cure its criminality.
Twenty thousand children
Die every day
From malnutrition
And preventable disease.
Twenty thousand, every day.

All this, an iceberg’s
Puny tip.

How?
How can we heed
The happy refrain,
And just, dammit,
Just
Let the sun shine in?
(10/23/13)

A corollary proposal might end
Our vicious modern wars effectively.
Let us adopt a universal law
Requiring ev’ry male from sixteen
To sixty—ev’ry male in this grim world—
To get laid ev’ry day of his cold life.
(To be fair, a few medical waivers
Might be granted, if clearly justified.)
The result, pleasant and benevolent,
Leaves no testosterone to fuel those wars.
(10/16/13)